Archive for the ‘matt harrison’ tag

Hopefully his MVP vote goes better for Harper than this day did. (Photo by Greg Fiume/Getty Images)

Everyone does an “Awards Prediction piece.” This post for me is kind of a running diary throughout the season, with the final predictions written at season’s end but then not published until after the WS ends/Awards season starts.

A few awards have already been given out, ones that I don’t necessarily try to predict anymore:

Fielding Bible Awards: not an official award but certainly a better way of evaluating defenders than the Gold Gloves (though, to be fair, they’re getting much much better at identifying the true best defenders year in, year out). No Nats awarded.

Gold Glove Finalists: announced with 3 finalists for each award; Bryce Harper and Wilson Ramos named as finalists but neither will win.

Hank Aaron awards for “Most Outstanding Offensive Player” in each league: Bryce Harper and Josh Donaldson, who not surprisingly is who I chose for my MVP predictions. I kinda wish this was a more prevalent award than the constant arguing we have about MVP.

Relievers of the Year: formerly known as the “Fireman’s reliever awards” and now named for legendary relievers Mariano Rivera/Trevor Hoffman: won this year by Andrew Miller of the Yankees, Mark Melancon of the Pirates.

A whole slew of other Sporting News annual awards: google “sporting news baseball awards 2015” and you can see players of the year, pitcher of the year, post-season all-star teams, manager of the year, etc.

I put all these dates and links plus a whole lot more into my “off-season” calendar, which will publish soon now that the season is officially over.

These are not always who I think *deserve* the awards necessarily, just how I think the voters will vote. There are some really close races. Here’s my thoughts:

NL MVP: Bryce Harper wins for three main reasons: 1) his season is one of the best of the last 50 years. 2) there’s no obvious candidate on any of the division winning teams (no sorry, Yoenis Cespedes doesn’t count) and 3) Even though the Nats didn’t win the division, they were in the race nearly the entire season. No excuses here. You might see some non-Harper votes b/c some middle aged fat slob of a homer writer has some misrepresented axe to grind but he should win easily.

NL Cy Young: Jake Arrieta: I can’t believe I’ve selected Arrieta over Greinke, but Arrieta’s 2nd half will, again, “win the narrative.” Kershaw has been unbelievable too (and my fantasy team in the championship is proof), so really you can’t go wrong with these guys in any order. I think it goes Arrietta, Greinke, Kershaw. Side note; so, is the Baltimore pitching coaching staff the most incompetent in the league or what? How does Arrieta go from being a 6ERA starter in Baltimore to a guy who is posting a sub 2.00 ERA in one of the best hitter’s parks in the league?

NL Rookie: Kris Bryant: for a while I thought this was Joc Pederson‘s to lose … but Bryant kept hitting and Pederson sat. Wow are the Astros kicking themselves for drafting Mark Appel over Bryant or what??

NL Manager: Terry Collins: There’s no team in the NL in a more surprising position than the Mets, so Collins wins the award that our own Matt Williams so richly “earned” last year. I wouldn’t be surprised though to see Joe Maddon get this given how great the Cubs were.

NL Comeback Player of the year has to be Matt Harvey; there’s nobody else really close in the NL.

AL MVP: Josh Donaldson: There’s just no reason Mike Trout shouldn’t win this award … except that voters are a fickle bunch and fall for the story. Donaldson is a good story, playing on a good story of a team in Toronto. He wins.

AL Cy Young: Dallas Keuchel: He was the best in the first half, the ASG starter, and no there’s no reason not to think he finishes off the season. In fantasy he was like a 15th round pick and he’s a top-10 producer. Amazing.

AL Rookie: Carlos Correa: If you want to argue that Francisco Lindor deserves this, I wouldn’t disagree. I’m guessing Correa has the name power with the voters though and wins out. Lindor has a much better average and is a superior defender, but Correa has 20+ homers, a benchmark number that will get him the votes.

AL Manager: Jeff Bannister: Even though Toronto is a surprise team, getting the talent handed to you like that is not the mark of a champion manager. What is going on in Texas is nothing short of amazing. At the beginning of the season the had an *entire rotation* on the D/L: Darvish, Harrison, Perez, Scheppers and Holland. Scheppers may not have stayed there very long, but they looked like a 90-loss team, not a divisional winner over the likes of LA and Houston.

AL Comeback player of the year goes to Prince Fielder for returning strongly from his neck injury. If Alex Rodriguez had missed a year due to injury instead of litigation, he would likely be the winner. By the way; how good was Alex Rodriguez doing color work for Fox Sports at the World Series? He was damn impressive to me, great analysis, well spoken, well-dressed of course … and could not have provided more contrast to Pete Rose if they had found those two guys out of central casting.

So, how did the major awards evolve over the course of the season? By my sense, the awards kind of went like this from April to September:

NL MVP: Stanton to Harper, maybe Goldschmidt, no definitely Harper, narrative Cespedes but has to be Harper. Nobody else makes sense to take it away from him on narrative.

AL Rookie: Travis/Souza early, Burns making a name, but Correa is the leader most of the season, Lindor making noise late, Correa holds on.

As with last year’s version of this post, instead of printing links to writers early and mid-season predictions, I’ll just throw those links into the monthly reviews for context. This post is more like a season-long diary of the evolution of these awards; the sections were written in each month as the season progressed.

BaseballMusings maintains a Cy Young tracker stat, which is useful to identify candidates but not really a predictor.

MVP candidates: Trout stretching lead in AL, Jason Kipnis and Nelson Cruz also high in bWAR. Bryce Harper has stretched a massive WAR lead in the NL, Goldschmidt #2. Anthony Rizzo entering the discussion.

Cy Young candidates: Dallas Keuchel and Sonny Gray in the AL, Max Scherzer really standing alone in the NL; closest WAR pitcher in the NL is Aaron Harang and he isn’t likely to keep the pace.

Rookie of the year candidates: Still Travis and Souza in the AL, Kris Bryant and Joc Pederson in the NL are both explosive players and will be hard to catch.

All Star Break

MVP candidates: Probably still Trout and Harper. Goldschmidt is nearly as good but Harper has the narrative.

Cy Young candidates: Dallas Keuchel and Zack Greinke were the All Star starters and may be the leading candidates. Scherzer needs to get some run support; he’s barely above .500.

Rookie of the year candidates: Former Nat Billy Burns is in the bWAR lead, but Carlos Correa likely gets the nod. In the NL, Bryant/Pederson have a commanding lead but Matt Duffy starting to put his name out there, and if the Cubs would just let Kyle Schwarber stay in the majors he might hit his way to the title.

Mid August

MVP candidates: Trout has competition in the form of Josh Donaldson in the AL. Nobody’s close to Harper in the NL, still.

Cy Young candidates: In the NL, Scherzer’s star has faded while LA’s two aces have each had a significant scoreless innings streak and could finish 1-2. Also in the NL; deserving candidates Jacob deGrom, Jake Arrietta and Gerrit Cole. In the AL, it still looks like a dogfight between Gray and Keuchel. But David Price is coming on strong post-trade and Chris Archer should get some top-5 votes.

Rookie of the year candidates: Its the year of the rookie; never before have we seen so many high-impact rookies in the league at once. The AL seems set for Carlos Correa, with guys like Roberto Osuna, Andrew Heaney and Lance McCullers chasing him. The NL has a number of candidates. Bryant and Pederson have gotten the ink, but guys like Matt Duffy, Jung Ho Kang, Noah Snydergaard and Randal Grichuk are also worthy players. Taylor Jungmann, Kyle Schwarber and even Joe Ross are also rans in the race thanks to later callups. Bryant may win thanks to name recognition, but in other years any of these guys would have been candidates.

Managers of the Year: we’re 100 games into the season, early enough to see some trends in the “Award-given-to-the-manager for his team unexpectedly overachieving the most in 2015” award. In the AL, clearly Houston is the surprise team and in the NL the Mets are the surprise team, so we’ll go with A.J. Hinch and Terry Collins.

Comeback Players of the Year: Early candidates include Brett Anderson, Jeff Francoeur, Danny Espinosa and perhaps Matt Harvey. In the AL, I think it has to be Alex Rodriguez or perhaps Prince Fielder. Perhaps Chris Davis comes into the mix too.

September

MVP candidates: In the AL: Donaldson has overtaken Trout thanks to a huge end-of-season push and Trout’s injury. In the NL, the Nats downturn may have opened up the door for both Anthony Rizzo and Andrew McCutchen. That is if we listen to “narrative” about how teams need to be playing meaningful games. Of course that being said, the Nats are playing very meaningful games; they’re trying to chase down a divisional leader so maybe the narrative still works for Harper. But not after a home sweep, when NY beat writers start beating the drum for Cespedes .. .which would be ridiculous since he only played a couple of months in the NL.

Cy Young candidates: In the AL, it probably comes down to Keuchel and Sale, with Price in the mix too thanks to his sterling season for Toronto post-trade. In the NL: Arrietta has had the greatest 2nd half in baseball history; can he overtake Greinke?

Rookie of the year candidates: In the AL: Francisco Lindor making some noise but its still Correa. In the NL, Pederson has gotten benched so it looks like Bryant is the leader, despite Duffy’s better season by WAR.

Managers of the Year: at this point the “surprise” teams are the Mets and suddenly the Rangers. I’ll go with their managers Collins and Bannister. Some in the NL think Maddon and the Cubs are really the surprise team and they’re kind of right … but I maintain the Mets are even more so.

Comeback Players of the Year: I’ll go with Harvey in the NL, Fielder in the AL; nobody’s giving A-Rod an award.

Lets look at those teams that altered their rotations and talk about how much they improved. In order of perceived impact:

1. Los Angeles: added Mat Latos and Alex Wood, replacing two placeholders who had taken over for the injured Brandon McCarthy and Hyun-Jin Ryu. Add Latos and Wood to what the Dodgers were already rolling out and I feel like they have become the new team to beat in the NL.

2. Toronto: adds the best pitcher on the market David Price to a team that really, really needed a bump in their pitching. Price is used to the AL East and gives Toronto (coupled with their big Troy Tulowitzki move) a leg up on their divisional rivals. The rest of the division mostly stood pat in terms of the trade deadline, and the division is there for the taking. I believe Toronto can catch the Yankees; they’ve been incredibly unlucky by RS/RA and should regress upwards.

3. Kansas City: Johnny Cueto immediately replaces the injured Jason Vargas in a “nice timing” move, and KC solidifies its grip on the division. This move wasn’t about getting to the post season as much as it was about winning once they get there. Cueto is their 2015 version of James Shields; the workhorse who they can lean on in the 5- and 7-game series.

4. Houston: added Scott Kazmir and Mike Fiers, who will slide in to the 4th and 5th spots and supplant the under performing Scott Feldman and others who need more time in AAA. While not as flashy as some other teams’ moves, this makes the back of Houston’s rotation stronger. And, it should be noted, Houston’s main AL West rival (Los Angeles) not only didn’t make a move but just lost one its key starters to injury (C.J. Wilson). Houston’s rebuilding plan looks like its at least a year ahead of schedule and coupled with serious injury issues to their competitors look like the favorite in the AL West.

5. Texas: adds Cole Hamels, who Philadelphia *finally* moved after sitting on the pot for 2 years. I think this move is more about 2016; I don’t really see Texas making a move in 2015. But it is a significant move: Hamels could give Texas one of the best AL 1-2 punches when Yu Darvish comes back, and then they have a nice collection of arms to choose from to fill out the rotation (Gallardo, Holland, Perez, Lewis, Martinez).

6. San Franciscoadds the underrated Mike Leake, who slides into the #3 spot, prevents the Giants from even considering using Tim Lincecum in the rotation any longer, and certainly gives them an upgrade over what they were getting from Tim Hudson. SF isn’t *that* far back from LA in the division … but more importantly is working hard to secure a WC spot.

7. Pittsburghmakes a minor move in adding J.A. Happ, who slides nicely and fortuitously into the spot that A.J. Burnett may be giving up to injury.

8. Chicago Cubscuriously added Dan Haren to their rotation; adding a mediocre #5 starter to a team that plays in a hitter’s park may back fire. I would have thought Chicago would have been more aggressive to try to secure the 2nd wild card, but then again is it fair to say their rebuilding plan is also a year ahead of schedule right now? Maybe they go big in the off-season to add starters behind Lester/Arrieta.

Sellers and the Impacts to their rotations:

– Detroitmoved backwards, selling their ace but acquiring a good prospect in Daniel Norris. This move also lets them try out a couple of starter prospects for the rest of a season where they’re clearly not going to catch Kansas City.

– Oaklandwas a seller but didn’t augment their rotation very much, getting a #5 starter in Aaron Brooks. Oakland has been completely snake-bit this season, sporting one of the best run differentials in the game but having lost 75% of the one-run games they’ve played. Billy Beane isn’t afraid to deal though and he’s got more than enough starting pitching coming off injury to compete in 2016.

– Philadelphiagot the rotting corpse of Matt Harrison in return for Hamel, along with a whole slew of players; I doubt Harrison ever pitches for them.

– Cincinnatisold off their two best pitchers and now are doing open auditions at the MLB level for their 2016 rotation.

– Miamifinds themselves in a familiar place, selling off assets so as to line the pockets of their owners needlessly. They lose two rotation guys but augment from the D/L and the farm system. They’ll regroup for 2016 and continue to challenge as the worst organization to their fan base.

– Seattlewas sort of a seller, flipping off back of the rotation guys for spare parts. They did not meaningfully alter their core rotation. Their problem is simply under-performance.

– Atlantacuriously parted with one of the most valuable resources in the game; the effective MLB-minimum starter. They ended up with draft picks and prospects and a Cuban wild card in Hector Olivera.

– Milwaukeeparted with a 5th starter, giving those starts to their #1 prospect Taylor Jungmann. A good deal for them.

(Editor’s Note: sorry for the tardiness on this post: I had it completely written and a WordPress or browser glitch lost 1,000 words of analysis. So it took a bit of time to cobble back together what I had originally written. Then the Souza trade hit, then the Cuban thing … and this got pushed).

What a GM Meeting week! As one of the Fangraphs guys noted, there were so many transactions, so fast, that he literally gave up trying to write individual analysis pieces and went to a running diary of sorts. I was amazed at the number of significant deals and trades made, especially when it came to starters. So lets take a look at who shook things up.

Chicago White Sox: acquired Jeff Samardzija in Oakland’s fire sale to go with established ace Chris Sale, the highly underrated Jose Quintana. From there the White Sox have question marks: John Danks is just an innings eater at this point and Hector Noesi was not effective in 2014. But the White Sox have one of the brightest SP prospects in the game at AAA in Carlos Rodon (their fast-rising 2014 1st round pick) and their former #1 prospect Erik Johnson (who struggled in his debut in 2014 but has a good minor league track record). So by the latter part of 2015 the White Sox could be a scary team for opposing offenses to face.

Minnesota: just signed Ervin Santana to join a rotation containing the rejuvinated Phil Hughes, the decent Ricky Nolasco and first rounder Kyle Gibson. If they (finally) call up former Nats 1st rounder Alex Meyer to fill out the rotation and replace the dregs that gave them #4 and #5 rotation spot starts last year, they could be significantly improved. Of course, the problem they face is the fact that they’re already playing catchup in the AL Central and still look like a 5th place team in this division.

Los Angeles Angels: adroitly turned one year of Howie Kendrick into six years of Andrew Heaney, who should thrive in the big AL West parks. If the Angels get a healthy Garrett Richards back to go along with the surprising Matt Shoemaker, they may have a surplus of decent arms being stalwards Jered Weaver and C.J. Wilson.

Miamihas spent some cash this off-season, but they’ve also gone shopping and upgraded their rotation significantly. After acquiring the decent Jarred Cosart at the trade deadline, they’ve flipped bit-players to acquire Mat Latos, added Dan Haren and a $10M check while parting ways with the unproven youngster Andrew Heaney, and should get ace Jose Fernandez back by June 1st if all goes well with his TJ rehab. Add to that Henderson Alvarez and the Marlins look frisky (their new-found depth enabled them to move Nathan Eovaldi to the Yankees). Rumors are that Haren won’t pitch unless he’s in SoCal, but $10M is an awful lot of money to turn up your nose at. This is an improved rotation no doubt, and the rest of the Marlins lineup looks good too.

New York Metsget Matt Harvey back. Enough said. Harvey-Jacob deGrom is one heck of a 1-2 punch.

Chicago Cubs: added an ace in Jon Lester, re-signed their own effective starter in Jason Hammel, and will add these two guys to the resurgent Jake Arrieta. Past that you have question marks: Kyle Hendricks looked great in 2014. And the Cubs gave nearly 60 starts last year to Travis Wood (5+ ERA) and former Nat Edwin Jackson (6+ ERA). I could envision another SP acquisition here and the relegation of Wood & Jackson to the bullpen/AAA/scrap heap.

Pittsburghwas able to resign Francisco Liriano and get A.J. Burnett for an under-market deal. This should keep them afloat if they end up losing Edinson Volquez in free agency. Otherwise they have decent back of the rotation guys and will get back Jamison Taillon perhaps in the early part of the year. This could help them get back to the playoffs with the anticipated step-back of NL Central rivals Cincinnati.

Los Angeles Dodgerssaid good bye to a stable of starters (Josh Beckett, Chad Billingsly, Kevin Correia, Dan Haren, Roberto Hernandez and Paul Maholm are all either FAs or have been traded away) and signed a couple of guys to go behind their big three of Kershaw, Greinke and Ryu who could quietly make a difference (Brandon McCarthy and Brett Anderson) if they remain healthy. That’s a bigger “if” on Anderson than McCarthy, who excelled once leaving the circus that Arizona was last year before the management house cleaning and should continue to excel in the huge park in LA. Were I Andrew Friedman, I’d re-sign at least a couple of these FA guys for 5th starter insurance … but then again, the Dodgers also have a whole slew of arms in AAA that could be their 5th starter. Or they could just open up their wallets again; there’s still arms to be had. Nonetheless, replacing 32 Haren starts with McCarthy will bring immediate benefits, and whoever they end up with as a 5th starter has to be better than the production they got last year out of that spot.

Team most improved: likely the Cubs.

What teams’ rotations have taken step backs or are question marks heading into 2015?

Boston: after trading away most of their veteran rotation last season, the Red Sox seem set to go into 2015 with this rotation: Clay Buchholz, Rick Porcello, Justin Masterson, Joe Kelly and Wade Miley. This rotation doesn’t look as good as it could be; Buchholz was awful in 2014, Porcello is good but not great, Masterson the same, Kelly seems like a swingman, and Miley has back to back 3.98 FIP seasons in the NL and will see some ERA inflation in the AL (though not as much as normal since Arizona is a hitter’s park). But Boston’s entire AAA rotation are among their top 10 prospects, so there’s plenty of depth they could use in trade or as reinforcements.

Detroit: Arguable if they’ve really taken a “step back,” but you have to question their direction. In the last two off-seasons they’ve traded away Doug Fister, Rick Porcello, Drew Smyly, prospect Robbie Ray and have (seemingly) lost Max Scherzer to free agency so that they can go into 2015 with this rotation: David Price, Justin Verlander, Anibel Sanchez, Alfredo Simon and Shane Greene. Is this a winning rotation for 2015?

Kansas City: They have replaced departing free agent ace James Shields with newly signed Edinson Volquez, keeping newly acquired Brian Flynn and 2014 draft darling Brandon Finnegan in the bullpen for now. KC is going to take a step back and will struggle to compete in the new super-powered AL Central in 2015, but have a slew of 1st round arms that look like they’ll hit in late 2015/early 2016. I do like their under-the-radar signing of Kris Medlen though; he could be a very solid addition to their rotation if he comes back from his 2nd TJ.

Oaklandwill have a new look in 2015, having traded away a number of core players. But their rotation should be OK despite having traded away Samardzija and let Jon Lester and Jason Hammel walk. Why? Because they stand to get back two very good rotation members who missed all of 2014 with TJ surgery in A.J. Griffin and Jarrod Parker. They should re-join the 2014 rotation members Sonny Grey, Scott Kazmir, newly acquired Jesse Hahn and either Jesse Chavez/Drew Pomeranz to form another underrated rotation. Of course, if these guys have injury setbacks, it could be a long season in Oakland.

Texasmade a couple of acquisitions, re-signing their own Colby Lewis and trading for Nats cast-off Ross Detwiler (who should fit in immediately as their 4th starter), to go with ace Yu Darvish and recently recovered Derek Holland. But Texas could significantly improve come mid-season when injured starter Martin Perez should return. The big question mark for Texas is Matt Harrison, who had to have two vertebrae in his back fused and may not return, ever. But if Harrison can come back, that gives Texas an opening day 1-5 that’s pretty improved over last year.

Clevelanddidn’t exactly have the world’s best rotation in 2014 but has done little to improve it going forward. They will continue to depend on Corey Kluber, newly minted Cy Young winner to head the line, but then its question marks. Carlos Carrasco was great in a combo role in 2014; where’d that come from? He was awful in years prior. Is Trevor Bauer dependable? They better hope so; that’s your #3 starter. They just signed Gavin Floyd after his injury shortened 9-game stint with Atlanta last year; he’s no better than a 4th/5th innings eater. Is Gavin Salazar ready for prime time? He wasn’t in 2014. And there’s little else on the farm; the Indians don’t have a significant starting pitcher prospect in their entire system.

Atlanta: The Braves surprisingly parted ways with Kris Medlen and not-so-surprisingly parted ways with Brandon Beachy, Gavin Floyd, Ervin Santana and Aaron Harang. That’s a lot of starter depth to cut loose. They look to go into 2015 with ace Julio Teheran followed by the newly acquired Shelby Miller, the inconsistent Mike Minor, the excellent but scary Alex Wood and under-rated 5th starter David Hale. That’s not a *bad* rotation … but it isn’t very deep. They have cut ties with guys who made nearly half their 2014 starts AND the guy who went 10-1 for them in 2012. They (inexplicably) picked up a starter in Rule-5 draft who had TJ surgery in June; are they really going to carry him that long on the active roster? They have no upper-end SP talent close to the majors. If one of these 5 starters gets hurt, Atlanta could be in trouble.

Philadelphia: all you need to know about the state of the Philadelphia franchise can be summed up right here: A.J. Burnett declined a $12.75M player option to play for the Phillies in 2015 and, instead, signed for 1 year, $8.5M to play for Pittsburgh. They will head into 2015 with their aging 1-2 punch of Cole Hamels and Cliff Lee, the former being constantly dangled in trade rumors but going nowhere because the Phillies GM clearly over-values what a guy like Hamels and his guaranteed contract can actually bring back in return in this market. Past Hamels/Lee there’s a bunch of non-descript names (David Buchanan, the waiver-claim Jerome Williams and the untested Cuban FA Miguel Gonzalez). Can this team even broach 70 wins?

Cincinnatiis moving backwards: they’ve traded away Mat Latos for pennies on the dollar (Keith Law says there’s “make-up issues.”) and moved the effective Alfredo Simon for other bit players. They’re putting a ton of faith that one-pitch Tony Cingrani will last a whole season and the youngster Anthony DeSclafini (obtained for Latos) will comprise a workable rotation. They do have a couple of decent prospects at AAA (Robert Stephenson and Michael Lorenzen) but they seem to be accepting that they’re taking a step back.

St Louistraded away their least effective starter (Shelby Miller) and acquired the best defensive RF in the game (Jason Heyward). Not a bad bit of work. But they now will go into 2015 with a question mark in the rotation; prospect Carlos Martinez will get the first shot and could be good; oft-injured Jaime Garcia is still hanging around, and there’s a couple of good arms in AAA who could matriculate into the rotation via the bullpen as Martinez did in 2014. It could end up being addition by subtraction (Martinez for Miller) but we’ll see.

Arizona has boldly re-made their rotation this off-season, dealing away 2014 opening day starter Wade Miley for a couple of SP prospects and dealing for 6 arms in total thus far. New rotation may not be flashy at the top (the enigmatic Josh Collmenter is slated for the opening day start in 2015) and is followed by former Tampa pitcher Jeremy Hellickson (traded for prospects), the two pitchers acquired from Boston for Miley in Rubby de la Rosa and Allen Webster and then a cattle-call for the 5th starter competition this spring. Arizona also ended up with former Nats farm-hand Robbie Ray, still have the highly regarded Archie Bradley waiting for his free agent clock to get pushed out a year, plus 2013’s darling Patrick Corbin coming off of TJ, not to mention Bronson Arroyo coming back from TJ later in the season. So there’s a lot of arms out there to choose from, eventually. But getting to Bradley-Corbin-Hellickson-de la Rosa-Webster from where they’ll start will be rough.

San Francisco‘s 2015 rotation could be just as effective as it needs to be (after all, they won the 2014 world series having lost Matt Cain mid-season and given the ineffective Tim Lincecum 26 starts). They seem to set to go with Cain, WS hero Madison Bumgarner, the age-less Tim Hudson, and then with Lincecum and re-signed aging FA Jake Peavy. This pushes Yusmeiro Petit to the bullpen for the time being and seemingly closes the door on Ryan Vogelsong‘s SF time. Rumor had it that they were all over Jon Lester… and missed. So a big acquisition to permanently sent Lincecum to the pen could still be in the works. SF’s bigger issue is the loss of offense. But the NL West is so weak they could still sneak into the playoffs again. I list them as question marks though because Cain might not be healthy, Lincecum could still suck, and Hudson and Peavy combined are nearly 80 years of age.

San Diegohas completely re-made their offense; do they have the pitching they need to compete? They signed Brandon Morrow to replace 32 awful starts they gave to Eric Stults last year; that should be an improvement. But they’ve traded away their 2nd best guy (Jesse Hahn) and are now set to have two lesser starters (Odrisamer Despaigne and Robbie Erlin) compete for the rotation. The Padres re-signed lottery ticket Josh Johnson (coming off what seems like his millionth season-ending arm injury) and still have TJ survivor Cory Luebke in the wings, possibly ready for April 1st. Their 1-2-3 of Andrew Cashner, Tyson Ross and Ian Kennedy isn’t that inspiring, but in San Diego’s home park, you don’t have to be Sandy Koufax to succeed. Have they done enough to compete in the NL West?

Which team has taken the biggest step back? Clearly for me its Arizona.

Who is left?

Well, clearly the two big FA names are Max Scherzer and James Shields. Scherzer gambled heavily on himself when he turned down 6/$144M. Would the Tigers make him a new offer? Are the Nationals possibly involved (I hope not for the sake of the team’s chemistry; what would it say to players if the Nats jettisoned Jordan Zimmermann so they could give Scherzer $150M?). He’d make a great fit in San Francisco … who wanted Lester but would get nearly the same great performance out of Scherzer. Meanwhile Shields could fit in Boston or for the Dodgers to give them the depth they’ve lost.

Past the two big names, you have older guys likely to go on one year deals. There’s no longer really room for Ryan Vogelsong in SF; he could be a decent option for someone. Aaron Harang has earned himself a likely 2 year deal as someone’s back of the rotation guy. Guys like Kyle Kendrick or Joe Saunders could be someone’s starter insurance policy. And of course there’s a slew of injury guys who are like pitching lottery tickets. Beachy, Billingsley, and Alexi Ogando all sound intriguing as reclamation cases.

But, once you get past Scherzer and Shields, anyone looking for a big upgrade will have to hit the trade market. The problem there seems to be this: there’s just not that many teams that are already waving the white flag for 2015. From reading the tea leaves this off-season, Atlanta is giving up, Cincinnati may be close, Philadelphia has begrudgingly admitted they’re not going to win, Arizona has already traded away its assets, Colorado is stuck in neutral, Oakland may look like they’re rebuilding but they still will be competitive in 2015, and young teams like Houston and Tampa aren’t giving up what they currently have. So a GM might have to get creative to improve their team at this point.

This is maybe the last time i get to recycle this shot of Detwiler. Photo Haraz Ghanbari/AP via federalbaseball.com

Got back from a meeting late thursday (aka the last day of these crazy 2014 Winter Meetings) and saw that one of the longer serving Nationals players in Ross Detwiler was reportedly traded to the Texas Rangers for two minor leaguers. Not sure who broke the story but I got it fromMark Zuckerman.

The return, per this USA Today story, is INF Chris Bostick and RHP Abel de los Santos.

Others in the Nats blogosphere have done the research on these two; no need to rehash it here. Short version: both guys played 2014 at high-A Myrtle Beach, where presumably the Potomac staff gave plenty of insight. Bostik is a 2B and de los Santos is a reliever with big K/9 numbers. By all reports Bostik is a fringe top 10 Rangers prospect and de los Santos is a sleeper. Neither is a 40-man roster guy, leaving the Nats with a vacancy for the moment.

Honestly, I think this is a good move for both player and team. I was somewhat worried the team would non-tender Detwiler rather than sign up for the $3-$3.5M he’d earn in arbitration. I would be too; his role on the team as last-man-out-of-the-bullpen can pretty easily be filled by any one of a number of rubber-armed veterans available on veteran-min contracts of $750k-$850k, or more than happily by one of our spare 40-man starters slated to pitch in AAA in 2015. Thanks to Jim Bowden‘s roster-moves in 2007, Detwiler blew through his options and service time far before he should have (per Zuckerman’s article, Bowden made a hand-shake deal to call up Detwiler in his draft year … a decision that has handcuffed the team with Detwiler for years. Now his options status is someone else’s problem.

At the same time, I do think that Detwiler can be a serviceable starter in this league, as his 2012 season showed. He just needed a shot, and that shot evaporated in this organization. So he gets a chance in an org that really, really could use him. He projects as being part of the 2015 opening day Texas rotation right now, behind Yu Darvish, Derek Holland, Colby Lewis and Nick Tepesch. However Texas has two other good starters coming off serious injuries (Matt Harrison had spinal fusion surgery in June and Martin Perez had TJ in May), so Ross will have to work to keep his spot if these regulars come back healthy. But that’s more opportunity than he was going to get in Washington.

Was this a good return? Probably, considering that I thought he was a non-tender candidate. Two high-A->AA prospects in positions of need works for me.

Kershaw’s new $30M/year contract will be tough to live up to. Photo via wiki.

One of my pet projects of recent years has been to track “major” Starting Pitcher free agent contracts and then to do analysis of how they turned out, on a Dollar per Win basis. This post is an updated version of this analysis to determine some of the “best” and “worst” free agent contracts ever awarded to starting pitchers. It is updated for 2014 from last year’s version of the post by my putting in all the 2013 data for pitchers, plus putting in the significant 2014 FA contracts. And, per requests I have added in bWAR and $/bWAR for analysis (though, as we’ll soon see, $/bWAR can be tricky to interpret for really poor performing pitchers).

The raw data spreadsheet is available in Google Docs at this link, or along the side of this blog window in the NAR Creation links section. I havn’t cut and pasted any of the data here because the spreadsheet is too “wide” for the blog; I suggest opening it up in a separate tab while reading this post.

Data Taxonomy/caveats: For ease of analysis, I depend on the Average Annual Value (AAV) of the contracts as opposed to trying to figure out exactly how many wins were earned in which year of a varying contract amount. Therefore (for example), Gio Gonzalez‘s contract may have only paid him $3.25M in 2012 but I’m using the full AAV of $8.4M for the purposes of the analysis (it would just be far too difficult to calculate each pitcher’s dollar per win on an annualized basis otherwise). This analysis focuses heavily on dollars per pitcher Win, despite the known limitations of the win stat. There is also dollars per Quality Start and now dollars per bWAR (baseball-reference’s version of WAR).

Here’s some interesting facts, that come out of this analysis (some of these points can also be seen at the amazing Cots Salary database, now at Baseball Prospectus, and are confirmed in my spreadsheet tracking the same):

Largest total Starting Pitcher Contracts ever signed

Clayton Kershaw‘s new 7yr/$214M deal signed this past off-season.

It beats out the previous record holder (Felix Hernandez‘s 7 year, $175M extension) by nearly $40M in total value.

CC Sabathia (7yrs/$161M in 2009) was the longer-time previous record holder before that.

Masahiro Tanaka signed one of the biggest ever deals (7 year $155M) before he ever threw a MLB pitch.

Largest Single-Season AAV

Kershaw’s new deal finally beats out Roger Clemen‘s long standing single season record 1yr/$28M deal in 2007 as the largest AAV pitcher contract.

Justin Verlander‘s new deal gives him an AAV of $28M, a 10% jump up from the $24-$25M/year threshold deals we saw a number of pitchers sign in the last couple of years.

What are some of the Worst Deals ever made? Lets talk about some of these awful deals on a $ per win or $ per bWAR basis. Most of these contracts are well known to baseball fans and are commonly thrown around when talking about the worst historical FA contracts, but they’re fun to revisit. Thanks to the bWAR inclusion, a number of new/more recent contracts now pop up on this list.

Kei Igawa‘s 2007 deal with the Yankees, which was 5yrs/$20M but included a $26M posting fee, is generally speaking the worst $AAV per Win contract ever signed. Igawa went 2-4 in 13 starts over the life of this 5 year deal, equating to $23M per win for his team. He made exactly one quality start, meaning the Yankees paid $46M per QS.He spent the last two seasons of this contract buried in AAA. For their $46M, the Yankees got a combined -0.6 bWAR out of Igawa.

Chris Carpenter signed a 2yr/$21M extension in St. Louis before the 2012 season that seemed like a good deal at the time; unfortunately for both sides Carpenter hurt his shoulder, only made 3 starts in 2012, went 0-2 and contributed a -2.3 bWAR in that time. So his dollars per win is infinite and his $/bWAR is uncalculatable. I still rank Igawa’s deal as worse though since it cost his team more than double the dollars, and since Carpenter’s troubles were injury related while Igawa’s was mostly due to performance.

Jason Schmidt‘s 3yr/$47M contract with the Dodgers. Schmidt made 10 total starts and went 3-6, equating to $15.6M per win. He totaled a -0.5 bWAR during this 3 year contract.

Oliver Perez made just 21 starts (and got 3 wins in the duration of his 3 year/$36M contract with the Mets. He was released in March of 2011, the final year of the contract, causing the Mets to eat $12M in salary. The Nats picked him up and carried him on their AA roster all year before dumping him as well; he’s now trying to remake himself as a loogy and is in Arizona’s bullpen.

Matt Harrison‘s current deal (so far) has been pretty expensive for the Rangers: for $11M in salary in 2013 they got just two starts and two bad losses before he hit the D/L and missed the remainder of the season. He still hasn’t returned. Odds are he recovers and has a chance to earn this contract, but you never know with shoulder injuries (though to be fair the injury that cost him 2013 was a ruptured disk in his back).

Tim Lincecum‘s recently completed 2yr/$40.5M contract was pretty ugly for San Francisco; he went 20-29, had just a 43% Quality Start percentage and contributed -2.3 bWAR over those two seasons for his $40M.

Barry Zito signed a 7yr/$126M deal. In those 7 years he went 63-80 and contributed just 3.0 bWAR in the lifetime of the contract. That’s $42M per win. By way of comparison, Tanner Roark‘s 5 weeks of effort for the Nats last summer totaled 2.0 wins.

Mike Hampton‘s injury plagued/ill conceived 7yr/$121M contract resulted in two full missed seasons and just a grand total 3.0 bWAR of value.

Edwin Jackson and Dan Haren both managed to put up negative bWAR for their 2013 seasons (for which they were both being paid $13M a piece). But those are just one-year deals; they aren’t the multi-year disasters that these other contracts can be.

Chan Ho Park signed a 5yr/$65M deal with the Dodgers; for those $65M the Dodgers got precisely 0.2 total bWAR in 5 seasons. That’s right; for that money they could have fielded a 4-A pitcher and gotten comparable value. Park was 33-33 during that time and missed significant time with injury.

How about some of the Best Contracts ever signed? Lots of players have signed small one year deals and won double-digit games, so those really cannot count. Starting with an arbitrary floor of a $50M free agent contract, here’s some of the best value FA contracts ever signed:

Pedro Martinez: 7yr/$92M, during which he went 117-37 for the Red Sox for a $786k/win total.

Justin Verlander‘s 5yr/$80M deal from 2010-2014 will be a steal for Detroit: he’s already contributed 25+ bWAR and is at about $888k/win. The same probably will not be said about his mammoth $140M extension.

Mike Mussina went 92-53 in his 6yr/$88.5M contract for $961k/win.

Chris Carpenter‘s 4yr/$50.8M deal from 2008-2011 was a steal for St. Louis: He may have missed some time but he still went 44-23 during that contract, contributed 13.6 bWAR and his $/win number was just $1.1M. He’s the only guy who appears in both the “best contracts” and “worst contracts” section in this post.

Mark Buehrle‘s 4yr/$56 deal from 2008-2011 resulted in about a $1M/win and just $3.2M/bWAR, great value for his team despite his mediocre looking 54-44 record.

Jered Weaver, Yu Darvish, and Hyun-Jin Ryu deserve mention here; they’re all in the early stages of their long-term contracts and are easily providing value in terms of $/win.

So what does this data mean? Here’s some conclusions when talking about Dollars per Pitcher Win.

Up to perhaps the mid 2000s, if you got about one (1) pitcher Win per million dollars spent on a player in the Free Agent market that you were doing great.

Now, if you’re getting anything under $1.5M per win, you should be happy. Especially if you’re paying an ace $25-$30M/year.

Anything over $2M/win is usually considered a bust. Nearly every contract in the $2M/win in AAV and above has been mentioned and criticized as being a bad contract; the list of “worst ever” above starts at $4M/win and goes higher.

If you pay a starter anything more than about $25M/season, you’re really going to have a hard time getting value back. There’s only been a handful of 20-game winners over the past 5 years or so, but paying a starter $24M like Greinke is getting is almost certainly going to be regretted at some point. An injury or a lost season completely blows the $AAV/win.

It illustrates more clearly than anywhere else the value of a top-notch, pre-Arbitration starter. Take Clay Buchholz for example; in 2010 he was 17-7 while earning the league minimum of $443k. That equates to $26,059/win on the same staff that was busy paying Daisuke Matsuzaka $2.06M per win (when adding in the $52M posting fee). Buchholz has struggled with injuries since then, but teams that lock down and depend on these pre-arb starters save untold amounts of FA dollars as a result.

This analysis is nearly impossible to do across baseball eras because of the general inflation of contracts and especially because of the bonanza of FA dollars being thrown out there right now. Pedro Martinez at the top of his game signed a 7yr/$92M deal. Imagine what he’d get today? It could be three times that considering how good he was in comparison to his counterparts in the mid 90s. He was coming off a 1997 season in which he struck out 305 batters, had a 1.90 ERA, a 219 ERA+ and won the Cy Young award. So going forward a general $1.25M/win is a more accurate barometer for whether or not a pitcher has “earned” his contract. But there’s no easy way to draw a line in the free agency sand and say that before yearX $1M/win was a good barometer while after yearY $1.25M/win is a good barometer.

A caveat to the $1M/win benchmark; there are different standards for obtaining wins. If you sign a $3M 1 year deal and then subsequently go 3-12 with a 6.00 ERA … while it looks like you reached the $1m/win threshold in reality you were, well, awful. This analysis only really holds up for major FA contracts paying in excess of $10M/year.

And here’s some discussions on Dollars per WAR, since we’ve added that in for this 2014 analysis.

The general rule of thumb is that “wins” in terms of WAR “cost” is somewhere between $6M and $7M on the open market. Did $6M/win work out in this analysis? Yes and no; it is sort of difficult to do this analysis with players badly underperformed. Take for example John Danks: he’s two years into a 5yr/$65M contract where he’s gotten hurt in both seasons and has just 7 wins and a 0.7 bWAR. Well, $26M in total salary paid so far for 0.7 bWAR equals a $37M/war figure. Well that’s not quite right.

The best you can do is look at player-by-player examples. Johan Santana‘s 6yr/$137.5M contract cost his team $9M/bWAR. That’s unquestionably bad. Cole Hamels went 17-6 in 2012 on a 1yr/$15M deal, which turned out to be just $3.2M per WAR for his 4.2 bWAR season. That’s great.

The $/bWAR analysis gets worse if the bWAR is negative; our own Dan Haren came in with a -0.01 bWAR for 2013; how do you decide how much the Nationals paid on a dollar-per-bWAR basis for Haren? If you divide 0.01 into his $13M salary you get a non-sensical -$1.3 billion figure.

Lastly, for comparison purposes, here’s the above analysis looks for the 2013 Nationals pitching staff. Keep in mind that the $/win figures for pre-arbitration pitchers vastly skew the analysis (apologies if this bleeds off the side of the browser screen)

Last Name

First Name

Total Value (includes guaranteed $)

$$/year AAV

Contract Term

Years Into Contract

Starts

QS

QS %

W

L

$ per start

$ per QS

$ AAV per win

Total bWAR

$ per bWAR

Strasburg

Steven

$19,000,000

$4,750,000

2009-13

5

75

46

61.3%

29

19

$316,667

$516,304

$818,966

8.5

$2,794,118

Gonzalez

Gio

$42,000,000

$8,400,000

2012-16

2

64

43

67.2%

32

16

$262,500

$390,698

$525,000

7.9

$2,126,582

Zimmermann

Jordan

$5,350,000

$5,350,000

2013

1

32

21

65.6%

19

9

$167,188

$254,762

$281,579

3.7

$1,445,946

Detwiler

Ross

$2,337,500

$2,337,500

2013

1

13

6

46.2%

2

7

$179,808

$389,583

$1,168,750

0.1

$23,375,000

Haren

Dan

$13,000,000

$13,000,000

2013

1

30

15

50.0%

10

14

$433,333

$866,667

$1,300,000

0.0

(0 war)

Maya

Yunesky

$8,000,000

$2,000,000

2010-13

4

10

1

10.0%

1

4

$800,000

$8,000,000

$8,000,000

-0.8

($10,000,000)

Karns

Nathan

490,000

490,000

2013

1

3

0

0.0%

0

1

$163,333

(0 QS)

(0 wins)

-0.4

($1,225,000)

Jordan

Taylor

490,000

490,000

2013

1

9

3

33.3%

1

3

$54,444

$163,333

$490,000

0.0

(0 war)

Ohlendorf

Ross

1,000,000

1,000,000

2013

1

7

3

42.9%

3

1

$142,857

$333,333

$333,333

0.9

$1,111,111

Roark

Tanner

490,000

490,000

2013

1

5

4

80.0%

3

1

$98,000

$122,500

$163,333

2.0

$245,000

The counting figures for Starts/QS/Wins/Losses are cumulative for the life of whatever contract the player is on. So for Strasburg, he was basically in the 5th year of his original 5 year deal, hence the 75 total starts in those 5 years.

The 2013 Nats have $AAV per win and $/bWAR mostly on the good side:

Yunesky Maya and Nathan Karns both contributed negative bWAR for 2013, so their numbers are meaningless.

Taylor Jordan and Dan Haren both came in at zero (or close enough to it) bWAR, so their numbers are also meaningless. Well, not “meaningless” in Haren’s case: basically he gave the team replacement performance for his $13M in salary; the team could have just called up a guy from AAA and let him pitch all year and gotten about the same value. Thanks for the memories!

The best $/win guy was Tanner Roark, who got 3 wins for his MLB minimum salary … and that’s not even taking into account the fact that Roark’s 2013 salary probably should be pro-rated for this analysis.

The worst $/win guy was Maya; who demonstrated yet again that his $8M contract was a mistake.

Nearly the entire staff has $/win values under the “you’re doing well” threshold of $1M/win. And nearly the whole squad is doing $/bWAR well below the $6M/bWAR range.

As with years past … feel free to skip this post if you don’t care about fantasy. I know for certain that reading about someone elses’s fantasy sports team can be a bit grating. But, if you do play fantasy i’m sure you’ll at least appreciate reading the selections and then looking at the team’s strength analysis at the end.

Last year, with my excitement over Washington’s Dan Haren signing and my supposition that Washington had the best rotation in the game, I ranked all 30 team’s rotations ahead of the 2013 season. Then, after the season was done, I revisited these pre-season rankings with a post-mortem to see how close (or, more appropriately, how far off) my rankings turned out to be.

Here’s the 2014 version of this same post: Pre-season rankings of the MLB’s rotations; 1 through 30. Warning; this is another huge post. I guess I’m just verbose. At this point midway through Spring Training there’s just a couple of possible FAs left that could have altered these rankings (Ervin Santana being the important name unsigned right now), so I thought it was time to publish.

The top teams are easy to guess; once you get into the 20s, it becomes pretty difficult to distinguish between these teams. Nonetheless, here we go (I heavily depended on baseball-reference.com and mlbdepthcharts.com for this post, along with ESPN’s transaction list per team and Baseball Prospectus’ injury reports for individual players).

I’ll bet you don’t know who this is, but I think he’s baseball’s best GM. Photo AP via mail.com

I was listening to a baseball podcast this past week about General Managers in baseball and heard an interesting fact; it has now been more than two years since an MLB General Manager has been fired. Sure enough, the last GM fired was Houston’s Ed Wade in November of 2011. There is a GM with less service time (Rick Hahn of the White Sox), but he rose to take over the job for long time GM Kenny Williams, who was promoted to executive VP of the team. So all in all there’s been decent stability among baseball executives in the shorter term.

I’ve had a draft version of a “GM Rankings” post written for nearly three years. Why so long? Because I started the post, got distracted, and then no less than seven general manager positions were filled/replaced in two very hectic weeks following the end of the 2011 season. There’s no way you can judge how well a GM has done with just a few months on the job, so there was no point in trying to rank the GMs when a quarter of them were un-rankable.

Well, now we’re two plus years onwards from October 2011, each of those seven new GMs has had two seasons and three off-seasons to show their vision, and I think its time to revisit my rankings.

Below is an attempt to rank the GMs, #1 to #30. Beware: this is a massive post. 6,000+ words. I may have over-done it a little bit.

To me, a successful GM balances several factors all at once:

Winning at the major league level (obviously).

Total payroll outlay (in the context of free agency and use of your payroll budget)

Player development/Farm system rankings

Trades and industry opinion and reaction on moves made to build your team

Now for the caveats to keep in mind to the above GM goals:

Purposely NOT winning on the field: In some cases you get carte blanche to purposely be awful on the field after years of mis-management and get a pass (see Houston Astros and the Chicago Cubs, along with several other teams to a lesser, less obvious extent).

Payroll discrepancies/Major market GMs: To me, generating the best or 2nd best record in baseball with the largest payroll isn’t proving anything. In fact, if you do NOT make the playoffs despite such a massive payroll (as the Red Sox didn’t do in 2010 and the Yankees didn’t do in 2012), then if anything you’re really failing as a GM. So payroll versus success counts heavily to me. As you’ll see below with the rankings of the GMs from the profligate teams.

Farm system usage caveats: In some cases you sacrifice your farm system to make acquisitions to help you win now (like what the Milwaukee Brewers did in 2011 and what Toronto has done for the last couple of years).

I created a GM rankings spreadsheet where I track all sorts of interesting information that you use to judge GMs (the link is also along the right hand side of the blog), and where I tried to quantitatively judge the 30 GMs. The spreadsheet has GM tenure, market size, ownership meddling factors, Farm system rankings, 2012 and 2013 payroll versus W/L rankings, plus my attempts to quantify three facets of a GM’s job: MLB success, Trades and FA moves and the Farm system. I will freely admit; i am paying significantly more attention to performance over the past three years than performance over the past 10. Maybe that’s fair, may be not. But it hurts a long-time GM like Brian Cashman who guided his team to the playoffs year after year (but, see Cashman’s write up for my reservations on GMs of massive payroll teams).

I’m classifying the GMs into rough tiers:

The Elite: The best GMs in the game, who have balanced payroll, on-field success and development the best.

The Excellent: a group of ten or so GMs who are all excellent at what they do and are mostly interchangeable up and down the order.

The Middle-ground: a group of GMs that happens to include three of the biggest spender teams and the bottoming-out teams that are difficult to judge.

The Concerning: GMs who for various reasons are struggling right now.

The Underperforming: the bottom few GMs who for various reasons are easy targets for bloggers based on their moves and their teams.

It is really hard to rank these guys 1 to 30 without someone nit picking the order, but I would argue with you if you told me that some one in the bottom tier was actually “good.” It wasn’t as easy to do these rankings as I thought it would be; in fact every time I’ve come back to this post i’ve ended up moving around the GMs, to the point where I’m just declaring victory and publishing. I like the top and bottom of these rankings, but if you wanted to argue that the guy I’ve got ranked 22nd really should be 18th, then I probably won’t disagree.

Lets give it a shot:

The Elite

1. John Mozeliak, St. Louis. What more can you say about the model franchise of baseball and its leader/architect? The #1 farm system last year, a huge percentage of its players home-grown, in the playoffs three of the last four years, a win and a runner-up in that time, and all while maintaining a payroll outside the top 10 in the league. This team survived the FA loss of the game’s best player (Albert Pujols) by returning to the playoffs the subsequent year and leading the league in wins in 2013. Can’t ask for much more than that. Mozeliak is my choice for the best GM in the game over two other more famous candidates in the elite category.

2. Andrew Friedman, Tampa Bay. Is there any argument that Friedman is this high? He took over in 2005 and within three years had the league’s best record. They’ve won 90+ games four years in a row in the league’s best division. He’s done this despite routinely having one of the lowest payrolls in the game, despite off-loading talent as soon as it becomes pricey, by stockpiling draft picks (11 of the first 75 picks in the 2011 draft), and by signing his key players early on to incredibly club-friendly contracts (see the deals that Evan Longoria and David Price signed pre-arbitration). In fact, I daresay that the success the Rays have had in the draft was a driving force behind richer owners (hello, Mr. Jerry Reinsdorf) pushing for bonus limits on the amateur market. In 2013 the team had the 3rd lowest payroll in the game but still made the playoffs ahead of the Yankees (who spent nearly FOUR TIMES as much as the Rays). Many would say these facts by default put Friedman #1 and I wouldn’t argue; only the drop-off in his farm system this year keeps him from overtaking Mozeliak. Call these two GMs 1 and 1-a.

3. Billy Beane, Oakland. The league’s 2nd longest tenured GM is likely to retire as its longest, since he owns a stake in the team and has re-made his approach to building teams in the last couple of years to great success. This ownership stake affords Beane the job security that he wouldn’t have otherwise, and has afforded him the time he needed to find his next “market inefficiency.” After some lean years following the “Moneyball” period in the mid 2000s, Beane has turned the A’s into a two-time defending AL West defending champion (a division with two of the most profligate spending teams in the game). His new team-building method seems to be around wheeling-and-dealing, and he’s been good at it. He turned over a significant amount of his 2012 team and won even more games in 2013. The ding on Beane may be his farm system; Oakland has struggled to develop players lately and some may argue that Beane’s ranking should be slightly lower as a result. I’ll say this though; being successful in the league when routinely putting out payrolls in the $55M-$60M range (where his 2012 and 2013 teams sat) by default makes you one of the best in my book.

The Excellent

4. Jon Daniels, Texas Rangers. Texas made the 2010 World Series with the 27th highest payroll in the major leagues. That in and among itself is enough to earn Daniels his street cred. However, his 2013 payroll had ballooned to $125M and they got unlucky by missing out on the playoffs by one game in 2013. Otherwise two World Series trips in four years is still nothing to shake a stick at, and the fact that they didn’t win game 6 of the 2011 World Series still amazes me. Daniels’ reputation is on the line though in a big way; his moves for Prince Fielder, for Shin-Soo Choo and for Alex Rios will be tested in 2014. The team will need everything it can get out of its (mostly) home grown rotation thanks to unfortunate injuries already suffered this year (Derek Holland tripping over his own dog). I give Daniels a ton of credit for accomplishing what he did with a $65M payroll; can he continue to do it with a $130M payroll? The bar only gets higher.

5. Walt Jocketty, Cincinnati. I still wonder how he got fired in St. Louis. He made the playoffs 6 years out of 7, including a World Series win. Then the year following he gets canned. In Cincinnati, he inherited a reigning NL MVP Joey Votto but made some shrewd acquisitions (Mat Latos, Aroldis Chapman), and drafted well (including selecting Mike Leake, who has yet to spend a day in the minors). The Reds play in a small market but have made the playoffs 3 of the last 4 years and continue to develop good players (Billy Hamilton and Tony Cingrani being the latest two studs). Jocketty is in a lofty rank now; we’ll see how things go after the loss of Shin-Soo Choo this past off-season and the slight turning-over of the roster we’re now seeing. If the Reds continue to make the playoffs, Jocketty should continue to get a ton of credit.

6. Ben Cherington, Boston Red Sox. Normally I’m really skeptical of GMs for teams with $175M payrolls who have success. But it is difficult to argue with what Cherington has done since taking over the reigns. He completely undid a ton of the damage that his predecessor had done by offloading two horrible contracts (Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez) and one malcontent (Josh Beckett) on the Dodgers and actually receiving prospect value back. He has quickly built the Boston farm system back to where it is one of the best in the game (they have as many top 100 prospects as any organization out there). And they just won the World Series. Cherington loses some credit for the disastrous Bobby Valentine hiring that led to the even more disastrous 2012 season … but he also recognized the faults with both the team and the manager and led a complete 180 degree turnaround. And I laughed at Cherington’s almost comical chasing of closers (as documented in this space in June 2013). But a title erases a lot of criticism. Boston remains well positioned going forward but will be depending very heavily on the fruits of their farm system in 2014 and beyond. If Boston turns these high value prospects into another playoff appearance while driving down payroll, Cherington’s ranking will only rise.

7. Mike Rizzo, Washington Nationals. Rizzo took over for the disgraced Jim Bowden in March of 2009 and had quite a job ahead of him. The team on the field was on their way towards losing 100 games for the second year in a row and the farm system was dead last in the majors. What has Rizzo done since? The team improved 30 games in the win column between 2010 and 2012, the farm system was considered the best in the game just two years on from Rizzo’s hiring (it should be said, thanks to two straight #1 overall picks resulting in two of the most dynamic players in the last 20 years being available to us), and now has two drafts and two off-seasons worth of work under his belt. He has brought a new mind-set to the draft, focusing on quick-to-the-majors college arms instead of nebulous tools-y high school players. He also has managed to work with the sport’s most notorious agent (Scott Boras) and successfully handled the two most high-profile draftees (arguably) in the history of the game. He has completely re-made the Nats roster in the past two years (only 3 members of the opening day roster 2009 team are still with the franchise). I’ve questioned his roster construction at times, feeling like he over-emphasized defenders at the expense of offense (running Michael Morse and Josh Willingham out of town), and he obsessed over a leadoff/CF type until he got one (Denard Span, trading away our best starting pitching prospect at the time), but a 98-win season smooths over a lot of criticism. Other pundits place Rizzo even higher than I have; 7th seems like a good spot to be until we see if this team can get back to the playoffs. If the Nats falter again in 2014 and don’t achieve something in this “window,” Rizzo’s tenure and the 2012 season may be viewed simply as an aberration instead of a well built team.

8. Frank Wren, Atlanta Braves. A couple years ago you would probably have Wren ranked in the middle of the pack at best. He clearly botched both ends of the Mark Teixeira deals, essentially turning Texas regulars Elvis Andrus, Neftali Feliz, Matt Harrison and catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia into a year of Teixeira and Casey Kotchman. Imagine how good Atlanta would be right now if they still had the 3 core members that remain in Texas. That being said, you cannot argue with where the Braves have been going. With middle-of-the-road payrolls and an awful TV deal the Braves have a team with a lot of home-grown talent that won the NL East by 10 games last year. His rotation is young and home-grown (Minor, Beachy, Medlen, Teheran), his team full of home-grown talent (with Freeman, Heyward and Simmons leading the way). And they have the best bullpen in the game. On the down-side, there are questions about some of his recent signings (BJ Upton and Uggla in particular), the farm system hasn’t quite come back from its 2010 rankings (thanks to so much of the talent it generated), and I’m not sure anyone really likes Atlanta’s 2013 off-season. So, we’ll give Wren credit for the past few years and indicate a note of caution going forward.

9. Neil Huntington, Pittsburgh Pirates. I’m not sure if I’ve got him too high, but I’ll say this: after getting Pittsburgh to the playoffs (and a winning record) for the first time in a generation, Huntington has them in the right direction. His moves to build last year’s team were excellent, the team has a ton of home-grown talent yet still has one of the best farm systems in the game, and should continue to be a success in the NL Central.

10. Sandy Alderson, New York Mets. How can anyone involved with the New York Mets over the past 10 seasons be considered a success? Because long-time baseball insider Alderson has done well with what he was handed and has the Mets heading in the right direction. In the past three years their farm system has grown in leaps and bounds, going from the bottom third to nearly a top 5 system. He got great value in trade for R.A. Dickey, has drafted and developed well, and we started to see the fruits of that player development with last year’s all-star game starter Matt Harvey. He’s finally rid of the awful contracts that his predecessor handed him ($43.6M of the team’s $93M payroll last year was dead money to just two guys: Johan Santana and Jason Bay. Almost 50%) and has bought conservatively this off-season while Harvey recovers and more of his young arms matriculate. If the Mets ownership ever decides to start spending money again and this team’s prospects come to fruition, they could be a force.

11. Brian Sabean, San Francisco Giants. Sabean is the longest tenured GM in the game, is unabashedly “old school” and is consistently mocked for his signings and moves. I thought his Tim Lincecum deal was ridiculous, I couldn’t believe the amount of money they guaranteed Hunter Pence, and more than a few people are questioning the Michael Morse deal. San Francisco’s farm system is weak and has been for years (after contributing MVPs and Cy Young winners, it should be said). To all these naysayers I say this: Two World Series titles in the last four years. The goal of every team is to win the title, and his teams have done it twice in four years. The Yankees have one title in the last 15 years. So you have to give Sabean some credit. 11th seems about right. Not too high, not too low. He’d have been much higher had his team not imploded in 2013.

12. Chris Antonetti, Cleveland Indians. Antonelli has subscribed to the same “wheeling and dealing” mechanism for building teams that Billy Beane has done, and it turned a perennial doormat Indians team into a 2013 playoff team. They play in a small market and have an $80M payroll, and Antonelli has taken their farm system from awful to respectable in the last three years. So the system is improving as is the on-the-field product. So far, so good in Cleveland for Antonelli’s tenure. I’m hesitant to push him much higher because i’m convinced the Indians succeeded in 2013 on the backs of several very awful divisional rivals (for example; the Indians were 17-2 on the season versus the White Sox but only 4-15 versus the Tigers, quite a swing for a 90-win team; if they were that legitimate a team they would have been much closer to .500 against their divisional winner). So slightly above the median looks good.

The Middle-Ground

13. Jeff Luhnow, Houston Astros. Three years ago Houston was an 88-loss team with a $90M payroll and the 29th ranked farm system. To his credit, Luhnow has reversed at least two of those factors in a big way; he has cleared the decks of the awful contracts that boat-anchored the Astros under his predecessor. Of course, at the same time he’s turned the Astros into a 110-loss team and, for the first time since the dead-ball era, last place three years running. So what has Luhnow done? Inside of two years he’s gone from the worst farm system to the best on the backs of #1 overall picks Carlos Correa and Mark Appel. Soon they’ll likely add Carlos Rodon to that stable, giving this team a fearsome set of players to roll-out within a couple years. So how do we judge Luhnow? Right about in the middle; he’s set out to do what he needed to do; if his foundation leads to on-the-field success Luhnow will be counted among the best GMs in the game for laying out the roadmap and sticking to it.

14. Brian Cashman, New York Yankees. Some say that just the mere fact that Cashman has survived as long as he has in the shadow of the Steinbrenner family ownership of the Yankees should be proof enough that he is among the best GMs in the game, and certainly higher ranked than he is here. Fair enough. But here’s the inescapable facts: his farm system is deteriorating, the most significant player on the 2014 team actually developed at home seems to be Brett Gardner, they had a $225M payroll last year and didn’t make the playoffs, their rotation will pivot mostly on a 40-yr old’s career renaissance, and their starting 2014 infield played a combined 200 games last year. And they’re being saved only by the grace of Bud Selig‘s hatred for Alex Rodriguez, whose suspension “saves” the team $25M this year (quickly spent on their new “#3 starter” MasahiroTanaka, to whom they guaranteed more than $175M dollars). I dunno; maybe Cashman should be lower. They have made the playoffs 4 of the last 6 years and have a title, and Cashman’s early tenure record speaks for itself .. but at what point do you notice that the team hasn’t done very much since the “core four” have entered their decline phases and begin to wonder if Cashman isn’t just a guy with a big checkbook instead of a good GM?

15. Dave Dombrowski, Detroit Tigers. Lots of on-field success thanks to Dombrowski sticking to his plan; he took over the year the Tigers lost 119 games. It is worth noting that 3 years later they were in the world series. Now he’s gotten them into the playoffs three years running, to which he’s due plenty of credit. But his farm system has hit rock bottom, he’s spending a ton of money, and he’s making very questionable moves. The industry panned his Doug Fister move (even if it seemed to greatly benefit the Nats) and people questioned his Prince Fielder for Ian Kinsler move. They were weird moves for a “win now” team. Perhaps I should give Dombrowski more credit, but his 2013-14 off-season knocked him down a number of pegs for me. If they miss out on the playoffs to an up-and-coming Royals team, he’ll suddenly be on the hot-seat.

16. Ned Colletti, Los Angeles Dodgers. Seriously, how do you judge the job Colletti is doing right now? His team’s payroll went from $95M in 2012 to more than $216M in 2013. He’s got $57M tied up in three outfielders not named Yasiel Puig right now. You almost got the impression that Colletti called up Boston and just said, “Hey, I’ll take every sh*tty contract off your hands right now … i’ve got money to spend and I don’t care how we spend it!” On the bright side, somehow the Dodgers have kept a reasonable ranking with their farm system throughout all of this, but the skill involved with paying everyone on your team $20M/year is close to nil. As with Cashman, I wonder if Colletti is ranked too high even here.

17. Dayton Moore, Kansas City Royals. Other mid-market teams (Oakland, Tampa, Pittsburgh) have shown a ton more accomplishment on the field than Kansas City; why hasn’t Moore’s teams done better? He’s been in his job nearly 8 seasons and the team spun its wheels for seven of them. Signings that didn’t pay off and fizzled farm system talents defined this team for years. Finally Moore went all-in, trading the best prospect in the game (Wil Myers) for a package of pitchers to help the Royals get over the hump. Between 2012 and 2013 they added $21M in payroll and these players and gained 14 games in the win column; just enough for … 3rd place. The industry entirely believes Moore was fleeced by Tampa Bay, and the trade looked so bad at the time that pundits wondered if Moore wasn’t getting some pressure from above to “win more now or get canned.” But it didn’t take Myers but the next season to win the rookie of the year award, and he may be a player that Kansas City fans rue for a generation. I think Moore may not be long for the job, and with good reason; why hasn’t he been able to win when guys like Huntington and Beane have?

18. Terry Ryan, Minnesota Twins. Ryan has been with Minnesota for-ever; hired in 1994. He stepped aside and then was re-hired in 2011, and is now in a rebuilding phase. The team let go one of its faces of the franchise last off season (Justin Morneau) and is going to begin a big youth movement this year. They’re going to be bad, but perhaps not Houston bad thanks to a couple of (odd?) starting pitcher signings. Help is coming; Ryan has built on of the best farm systems in the game and it features two of the top 5 prospects out there (Byron Buxton and Miguel Sano). Perhaps it isn’t fair to rank Ryan here with Luhnow higher, but Ryan was partly responsible for the downfall of this team and the abhorrent starting rotation of last year. But once their MVP-grade talents arrive at the majors, Ryan’s work of rebuilding the farm system should be rewarded.

The Concerning

19. Josh Byrnes, San Diego. Byrnes inherited a 90-win team that surprised but which was getting ready to hit a transitional stage. Byrnes got some good prospects from the Adrian Gonzalez deal and some more in the Mat Latos deal, but they havn’t turned into wins on the Three straight years of 71-76 wins has spirits dampened in San Diego. Now their MLB team looks poor, the farm system is good but drifting, and they’re talking about another rebuilding effort. He’s only a couple years in but things aren’t looking up; his division includes a team that is spending 4 times what he can spend.

20. Kevin Towers, Arizona. So here’s my summary of Towers’ tenure in Arizona so far: he continues to drive away players and prospects who aren’t “gritty” enough for him, trading them for 50 cents on the dollar. His farm system has gone from good to middle of the road. His payroll is rising … and yet his team is winning the same number of games. And yet both he and Kirk Gibson just got contract extensions. Why exactly does anyone think Towers and Gibson are doing a good job right now? How many more games would they have lost had they not magically found a 6-win player in Paul Goldschmidt (an 8th round pick) last year?

21. Jed Hoyer (Theo Epstein), Chicago Cubs. I know Hoyer is the GM, but lets be honest; this is Epstein’s team. The Cubs hired Epstein for him to re-make the franchise as he did in Boston. Except that Epstein left Boston in a huge mess, with a slew of very bad contracts and an even worse clubhouse. Now he’s come to Chicago and made some questionable moves (the Edwin Jackson signing, the Anthony Rizzo fan-boy pursuit, etc) while not making other more obvious moves (why is Jeff Samardzija still on this team if they’re “rebuilding?”). To their credit, they got value for Alfonso Soriano, only one of the most untradeable players in the game. And they’ve gotten a pass to rebuild the farm system, which is now ranked in the top 5 in the game and should start to bear fruit. Now, that farm system is loaded with hitters, and with Wrigley’s comfy stadium the Cubs may be offensive juggernauts in no time, but they still need pitching. How will the Hoyer/Epstein team handle that? Hopefully not with more signings like the Jackson deal.

22. Michael Hill, Miami Marlins. The one huge caveat that goes with the Miami GM job is this: Jeffrey Loria is probably the most hands on owner in the game, and you almost can’t judge this GM’s ability based on who is calling the shots. The only other owner who seems to have as much pull is, ironically, ranked next. Miami loaded up for 2012 in their new stadium and had completely dismantled things before August. Now they’re a $50M payroll team with some superstar prospects .. but a middling farm system and questionable direction.

23. Dan Duquette, Baltimore Orioles. Duquette has had an odd off-season; his owner 86’d two of his signings thanks to questioning the “medicals,” which insiders point out is Peter Angelos‘ method of nixing deals he doesn’t like. Must be frustrating. Instead Duquette is now signing every re-tread FA who can’t find a job thanks to the CBA’s draft pick compensation issues, punting draft pick after draft pick. The O’s did make the playoffs in 2012, thanks to an unsustainable record in one-run games, and have had a decent run of success out of their farm system (Manny Machado should be mentioned in the same breath as Trout and Harper frankly), but are they on the right track to get back?

24. Dan O’Dowd/Bill Geivett, Colorado Rockies. The Rockies have a very unique front-office structure right now, resulting from an August 2012 shake-up that left industry insiders questioning the roles and the message coming from the team. Nonetheless, the direction of the Rockies leaves something to be desired. They’ve drifted on the field, employed questionable starting pitching usage strategies, and generally are treading water. Their farm system is starting to look up though; will that be enough to compete in a division with the Dodgers?

25. Alex Anthopolous, Toronto Blue Jays. Anthopolous took over for the maligned JP Ricciardi after the 2009 season. In the time since, he traded Roy Halladay, acquired Morrow, traded for Escobar and Jo-Jo Reyes, acquired Rajai Davis, and perhaps most impressively offloaded the albatross contract for Vernon Wells. He had an 85-win team in the hardest division in baseball with a 70M payroll for 2011. Then he went for it, emptying the farm system (which was one of the league’s best in 2011) to acquire the likes of R.A. Dickey and the whole slew of ex-Marlins. Now he’s got a massive payroll, an underperforming team and empty cupboards in the minors. All the good work he did to prepare Toronto for battle in the AL east has gone for naught unless last year was just a big huge adjustment period for all these newly acquired veterans.

The Underperforming

26. Doug Melvin, Milwaukee Brewers: Melvin is an interesting case; the Brewers purposely bottomed out their farm system to make a playoff run in 2011, the last year before they lost Prince Fielder and their fortunes would change. And change they have; the Brewer’s player development efforts have not moved off the bottom of the league (their farm system is either last or dead last on every pundit list) while their on-the-field record has dropped (they’ve gone from 96 to 83 to 74 wins in the last three years). Now they’re the 4th best team in their division and it isn’t close, and it is unclear what their plan is going forward. They’ve got quality players at certain places, but have made odd signings (losing their 1st round pick last year to sign Kyle Lohse of all people). You can’t help the Ryan Braun situation, and they got unlucky with injuries (Corey Hart in particular) so perhaps this ranking is unfair. But I still feel like the Brewers are adrift in terms of strategy and thus Melvin’s ranked this low.

27. Jerry Dipoto, Los Angeles Angels. The worst or 2nd worst (along with Milwaukee) farm system in the majors for the past few years. One of the largest payrolls in the league giving them a 78-84 record last year. Over-paying for aging slugger (Albert Pujols) after aging slugger (Josh Hamilton) while inexplicably signing one of the worst statistical starters in the game to a multi-year deal (Joe Blanton) and entering last season with a clear and obvious rotation issue. Dipoto earned the absolute worst “quantitative grade” in my GM ranking xls, trying to measure the three GM factors of on-the-field success, farm system development and trades/FA signings. The only reason I don’t also rank him last is because i’m not entirely convinced that Dipoto isn’t a decent executive who’s being told by a highly-involved owner (Arte Moreno) to sign all these guys. But, there’s really no reason that a team playing in LA and who is spending three times what his divisional rival Oakland is spending isn’t consistently finishing ahead of them in the standings.

28. Rick Hahn (Kenny Williams), Chicago White Sox. What can you say? The White Sox lost 100 games with a $118M payroll last year and have had the worst (or near to it) farm system in the game for years. The White Sox organization is in a bad way, and i’m not sure why Williams’ stewardship was rewarded with the “promotion” to team president. They lost 18 games in the win column from 2012 to 2013 and it is hard to see how they’re going to be any better this year. It does seem though that they are undergoing a “rebuilding effort,” in that their payroll seems like it will be $40M less this year versus last and they’ve moved some of their bigger salaries in “rebuilding mode” moves (Alex Rios, Jake Peavy). So perhaps its slightly unfair to have Hahn so low, if he’s entering into a purposely bad period. Nonetheless; this set of executives got the White Sox where they are now, so their low ranking is earned.

29. Ruben Amaro, Philadelphia Phillies. I’ll admit that i’m probably biased here. While i’ve given credit to other GMs whose teams have had success in the past several years, i’ve not given Amaro the same benefit of the doubt. And that basically comes down to several, clear facts; Amaro has destroyed the Phillies with multiple long-term deals for declining players, most notably Ryan Howard‘s contract (widely considered the worst dollar for dollar contract in the game). His team 3rd highest payroll in 2013 and nearly lost 90 games. His recent FA moves have been laughable (Delmon Young and Michael Young? John Lannan as his sole pitching move last off-season? His ridiculous contract extension for Carlos Ruiz this past off-season?). His heels-in-the-ground obstinant refusal to adopt any understanding or acceptance for analytics or modern statistical approach to his job makes me wonder just how asleep at the wheel his owner is. He’s let his farm system lapse while his on-the-field product falters. He puts out mixed messages in regards to his direction (Cliff Lee mentioned in trade rumors? Are the Phillies going to rebuild or not?). But the coup-de-grace for me is the news that just came out that Amaro’s organization has purposely attempted to sabotage college kids who spurned the Phillies last summer, ratting them out to the NCAA out of pettiness, spite or vengeance. Despite their WS win and appearances in the last 6 years, I cannot for the life of me figure out why Amaro still has a job at this point.

30. Jack Zduriencik, Seattle Mariners. Zero playoff appearances in his tenure. His farm system has pushed out all the talent it apparently has to give and now is in the bottom third of the league with more than a few “busts” (notably Justin Smoak and Dustin Ackley vastly underperforming). A 90 loss team last year, and he’s just gotten done committing hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts yet likely has only improved his team a few wins, thanks to a fundamental lack of understanding of what it takes to build baseball lineups (he seems to be depending basically on 3 rookies in his rotation for 2014). And it seems that Zduriencik not only is poor at his job, but he may have depended on deception (if not outright fraud) to get it, thanks to the reporting of Geoff Baker at The Seattle Times last off-season. One only needs to look at his method of building teams to notice that he has no concept of defensive capabilities and he seems to collect 1b/DH types without consideration of how many runs they’ll be costing him thanks to sub-par defense (Michael Morse and Raul Ibanez at the corner OF positions last year, his plans to play Logan Morrison and Corey Hart in the OF this year). How long before Robinson Cano is a brooding $200M boat anchor on this team as they continue to lose 90 games year after year in a division dominated with better GMs and bigger payrolls? All these facts contribute to my ranking Zduriencik last.

MLBtraderumors ran a poll in April of 2013 where you can vote, and the top 5 crowd-source vote-getters are: Beane, Friedman, Mozeliak, Cashman and Sabean.

The NYPost’s Ken Davidoff ranks GMS every off-season and he came in with Friedman, Beane, Daniels, Dombrowski and Mozeliak in Dec 2013 (he has Cashman way too high, but he is a NY-based writer and focuses on the entire body of work).

Scherzer’s dominant Cy Young season brings the Tigers to the top. Photo AP Photo/Paul Sancya

In January, after most of marquee FA signings had shaken out, I ranked the 2013 rotations of teams 1-30. I was excited about the Nats rotation, speculated more than once that we had the best rotation in the league, and wanted to make a case for it by stacking up the teams 1-30.

I thought it’d be an interesting exercise to revisit my rankings now that the season is over with a hindsight view, doing some post-mortem analysis and tacking on some advanced metrics to try to quantify who really performed the best this season. For advanced metrics I’m leaning heavily on Fangraphs team starter stats page, whose Dashboard view quickly gives the team ERA, FIP, xFIP, WAR, SIERA, K/9 and other key stats that I’ll use in this posting.

(#2 pre-season) Detroit: Verlander, Fister, Sanchez, Scherzer, Porcello (with Alvarez providing some cover). Scherzer likely wins the Cy Young. Three guys with 200+ strikeouts. The league leader in ERA. And we havn’t even mentioned Justin Verlander yet. A team starting pitching fWAR of 25.3, which dwarfed the next closest competitor. There’s no question; we knew Detroit’s rotation was going to be good, but not this good. Here’s a scary fact; their rotation BABIP was .307, so in reality this group should have done even better than they actually did. Detroit’s rotation was *easily* the best rotation in the league and all 6 of these guys return for 2014.

(#3 Preseason): Los Angeles Dodgers: Kershaw, Greinke, Ryu, Nolasco, and Capuano (with Fife, Beckett, Lilly, Billingsley and a few others helping out); The 1-2 punch of Kershaw (the NL’s clear Cy Young favorite) and Greinke (who quietly went 15-4) was augmented by the stand-out rookie performance of Ryu, the surprisingly good half-season worth of starts from Nolasco, and then the all-hands-on deck approach for the rest of the starts. This team used 11 different starters on the year thanks to injury and ineffectiveness, but still posted the 2nd best team FIP and 5th best fWAR in the league.

(#8 pre-season): St. Louis: Wainwright, Lynn, Miller, Wacha and Kelly (with Garcia, Westbrook, and a few others pitching in). Team leader Chris Carpenter missed the whole season and this team still was one of the best rotations in the league. Westbrook missed time, Garcia only gave them 9 starts. That’s the team’s planned #1, #3 and #4 starters. What happened? They call up Miller and he’s fantastic. They call up Wacha and he nearly pitches back to back no-hitters at the end of the season. They give Kelly a starting nod out of the bullpen and he delivers with a better ERA+ than any of them from the #5 spot. St. Louis remains the bearer-standard of pitching development (along with Tampa and Oakland to an extent) in the game.

(#22 pre-season): Pittsburgh: Liriano, Burnett, Locke, Cole, Morton (with Rodriguez and a slew of call-ups helping out). How did this team, which I thought was so low pre-season, turn out to have the 4th best starter FIP in the game? Francisco Liriano had a renessaince season, Burnett continued to make Yankees fans shake their heads, and their top 6 starters (by number of starts) all maintained sub 4.00 ERAs. Gerrit Cole has turned out to be the real deal and will be a force in this league.

(#1 pre-season) Washington: Strasburg, Gonzalez, Zimmermann, Haren, Detwiler with Jordan, Roark and other starts thrown to Karns and Ohlendorf). Despite Haren’s continued attempts to sabotage this rotation’s mojo, they still finished 3rd in xFIP and 5th in FIP. Haren’s 11-19 team record and substandard ERA/FIP values drug this group down, but there wasn’t much further up they could have gone on this list. If you had replaced Haren with a full season of Jordan’s production, maybe this team jumps up a little bit, but the teams above them are tough to beat.

(#11 pre-season) Atlanta: Hudson, Medlen, Minor, Teheranand Maholm, (with rookie Alex Wood contributing towards the end of the season). Brandon Beachy only gave them 5 starts; had he replaced Maholm this rotation could have done better. Hudson went down with an awful looking injury but was ably covered for by Wood. They head into 2014 with a relatively formidable and cheap potential rotation of Medlen, Minor, Teheran, Beachy and Wood, assuming they don’t resign Hudson. How did they over-perform? Teheran finally figured it out, Maholm was more than servicable the first couple months, Wood was great and came out of nowhere.

(#26 pre-season) Cleveland: Jimenez, Masterson, McAllister, Kluber, Kazmir. Too high for this group? 7th in rotation fWAR, 8th in FIP, and 6th in xFIP. This group, which I thought was going to be among the worst in the league, turned out to be one of the best. Jimenez and Masterson both had rebound years with a ton of Ks, and the rest of this crew pitches well enough to remain around league average. They were 2nd best in the league in K/9. You can make the argument that they benefitted from the weakened AL Central, but they still made the playoffs with a relative rag-tag bunch.

(#9 pre-season) Cincinnati: Cueto, Latos, Bailey, Arroyo, Leake (with Tony Cingrani). Cueto was good … but he was never healthy, hitting the D/L three separate times. Luckily Cingrani came up from setting strikeout records in AAA and kept mowing them down in the majors. Latos was dominant, Leake took a step forward, and Bailey/Arroyo gave what they normally do. If anything you would have thought this group would have been better. 6th in Wins, 7th in xFIP, 9th in FIP. Next year Arroyo leaves, Cingrani gets 32 starts, Cueto stays healthy (cross your fingers, cross your fingers, cross your fingers) and this team is dominant again despite their FA hitting losses.

(#25 pre-season) New York Mets: Harvey, Wheeler, Niese, Gee, Hefner and a bunch of effective call-ups turned the Mets into a halfway-decent rotation all in all. 7th in xFIP, 11th in FIP. Most of this is on the backs of Matt Harvey, who pitched like the second coming of Walter Johnson for most of the season. Wheeler was more than effective, and rotation workhorses Niese and Gee may not be sexy names, but they were hovering right around the 100 ERA+ mark all year. One superstar plus 4 league average guys was good enough for the 9th best rotation.

(#12 pre-season) Texas: Darvish, Holland, Ogando, Perez, Garza at the end. Texas’ fWAR was the 2nd best in the league … but their accompanying stats drag them down this far. Despite having four starters with ERA+s ranging from 114 to Darvish’ 145, the 34 starts given to Tepesch and Grimm drag this rotation down. Ogando couldn’t stay healthy and Perez only gave them 20 starts. Garza was mostly a bust. And presumed #2 starter Matt Harrison gave them just 2 starts. But look out for this group in 2014; Darvish, a healthy Harrison, and Holland all locked up long term, Ogando in his first arbitration year, and Perez is just 22. That’s a formidable group if they can stay on the field together.

(pre-season #6) Tampa Bay: Price, Moore, Hellickson, Cobb, Archer and Roberto Hernandez. Jeff Niemann didn’t give them a 2013 start, but no matter, the Tampa Bay gravy train of power pitchers kept on producing. Cobb was unhittable, Archer was effective and Moore regained his 2011 playoff mojo to finish 17-4 on the year. An odd regression from Price, which was fixed by a quick D/L trip, and a complete collapse of Hellickson drug down this rotation from where it should have been. They still finished 12th in FIP and xFIP for the year.

(pre-season #21) Seattle: Hernandez, Iwakuma, Saunders, Harang, Maurer, and Ramirez.Seattle featured two excellent, ace-leve performers and a bunch of guys who pitched worse than Dan Haren all year. But combined together and you have about the 12th best rotation, believe it or not.

(pre-season #7) Philadelphia: Halladay, Hamels, Lee, Kendrick, Lannan (with Cloyd and Pettibone as backups). The phillies were 13th in xFIP, 10th in FIP on the year and regressed slightly thanks to the significant demise to their #1 guy Halladay. Lee pitched like his typical Ace but Hamels self-destructed as well. The strength of one excellent starter makes this a mid-ranked rotation. Had Halladay and Hamels pitched like expected, they’d have finished closer to my pre-season ranking.

(pre-season #17) Boston: Lester, Buchholz, Dempster, Lackey,Doubront, and Peavy: Boston got a surprise bounce back season out of Lackey, a fantastic if oft-injured performance from Buchholz, a mid-season trade for the effective Peavy. Why aren’t they higher? Because their home stadium contributes to their high ERAs in general. Despite being 3rd in rotation fWAR and 4th in wins, this group was 17th in FIP and 18th in xFIP. Perhaps you could argue they belong a couple places higher, but everyone knows its Boston’s offense that is driving their success this year.

(pre-season #16) New York Yankees: Sabathia, Kuroda, Pettitte, Nova, Hughes/Phelps. Hughes and Phelps pitched as predictably bad as you would have expected … but Sabathia’s downturn was unexpected. Are his years of being a workhorse catching up to him? The rotation was buoyed by unexpectedly good seasons from Nova and Kuroda. Pettitte’s swang song was pretty great, considering his age. Enough for them to slightly beat expectations, but the signs of trouble are here for this rotation in the future. Pettitee retired, Kuroda a FA, Hughes a FA, a lost season for prospect Michael Pineda and other Yankees prospects stalled. Are we in for a dark period in the Bronx?

(pre-season #29) Miami: Fernandez, Nolasco, Eovaldi, Turner, Alvarez,Koehler and a few other starts given to either re-treads or MLFAs. For Miami’s rotation of kids to rise this far up is amazing; looking at their stellar stats you would think they should have been higher ranked still. Fernandez’s amazing 176 ERA+ should win him the Rookie of the Year. Eovaldi improved, rookie Turner pitched pretty well for a 22 year old. The team dumped its opening day starter Nolasco and kept on … losing frankly, because the offense was so durn bad. Begrudgingly it looks like Jeffry Loria has found himself another slew of great arms to build on.

(pre-season #5) San Francisco: Cain, Lincecum, Bumgarner, Vogelsong, Zito, Gaudin.What the heck happened here? Cain went from an Ace to pitching like a 5th starter, Lincecum continued to completely forget what it was like to pitch like a Cy Young winner, Vogelsong completely fell off his fairy-tale cliff, and Zito completed his $126M journey in typical 5+ ERA fashion. I’m surprised these guys are ranked this high (14th in FIP, 16th in xFIP but just 27th in fWAR thanks to just horrible performances all year). What the heck are they going to do in 2014?

(pre-season #10) Arizona: Corbin, Kennedy, McCarthy, Cahill, Miley and Delgado. Corbin was 2013’s version of Miley; a rookie that came out of nowhere to lead the staff. Miley struggled at times but righted the ship and pitched decently enough. The rest of the staff really struggled. I thought this was a solid bunch but they ended up ranked 23rd in FIP and 14th in xFIP, indicating that they were a bit unlucky as a group.

(pre-season #15) Chicago White Sox: Sale, Peavy, Danks, Quintana, Santiago and Axelrod. Floyd went down early, Peavy was traded. Sale pitched well but had a losing record. The team looked good on paper (16th in ERA) but were 26th in FIP and 17th in xFIP.

(pre-season #14) Oakland: Colon, Anderson, Griffen, Parker, Straily, Milone, with Sonny Gray giving 10 good starts down the stretch. This rotation is the story of one amazing 40-yr old and a bunch of kids who I thought were going to be better. Oakland is bashing their way to success this season and this group has been just good enough to keep them going. I thought the likes of Griffen and Parker would have been better this year, hence their falling from #14 to #19.

(pre-season #19) Chicago Cubs: Garza, Samardzija, Jackson, Wood, and Feldman: Feldman and Garza were flipped once they showed they could be good this year. Samardzija took an uncharacteristic step backwards. Jackson was awful. The Cubs ended up right about where we thought they’d be. However in 2014 they look to be much lower unless some big-armed prospects make the team.

(pre-season #20) Kansas City: Shields, Guthrie, Santana, Davis, Chen, Mendoza: despite trading the best prospect in the game to acquire Shields and Davis, the Royals a) did not make the playoffs and b) really didn’t have that impressive a rotation. 12th in team ERA but 20th in FIP and 25th in xFIP. Compare that to their rankings of 25th in FIP and 26th in xFIP in 2012. But the results on the field are inarguable; the team improved 14 games in the Win column and should be a good bet to make the playoffs next year if they can replace the possibly-departing Santana and the ineffective Davis.

(pre-season #23) Milwaukee: Lohse, Gallardo, Estrada, Peralta, and dozens of starts given to long-men and call-ups. I ranked this squad #23 pre-season before they acquired Lohse; in reality despite his pay and the lost draft pick, Lohse’s addition ended up … having almost no impact on this team in 2013. They finished ranked 23rd on my list, and the team was 74-88.

(pre-season #13): Los Angeles Angels: Weaver, Wilson, Vargas, Hanson, Blanton,Williams: The Angels are in a predicament; their two “aces” Weaver and Wilson both pitched well enough. But nobody in baseball was really that surprised by the god-awful performances from Hanson or Blanton (2-14, 6.04 ERA … and the Angels gave him a two year deal!). So in some ways the team brought this on themselves. You spend half a billion dollars on aging offensive FAs, have the best player in the game languishing in left field because your manager stubbornly thinks that someone else is better in center than one of the best defenders in the game … not fun times in Anaheim. To make matters worse, your bigtime Ace Weaver missed a bunch of starts, looked mortal, and lost velocity.

(#28 pre-season) San Diego: Volquez, Richards, Marquis, Stults, Ross, Cashner: have you ever seen an opening day starter post a 6+ ERA in a cave of a field and get relased before the season was over? That happened to SAn Diego this year. Another case where ERA+ values are deceiving; Stults posted a sub 4.00 ERA but his ERA+ was just 87, thanks to his home ballpark. In fact its almost impossible to tell just how good or bad San Diego pitchers are. I could be talked in to putting them this high or all the way down to about #28 in the rankings.

(pre-season #27) Colorado: Chatwood, De La Rosa, Chacin, Nicaso, Francis and a few starts for Garland and Oswalt for good measure. Another staff who shows how deceptive the ERA+ value can be. Their top guys posted 125 ERA+ figures but as a whole their staff performed badly. 26th in ERA, 19th in FIP, 26th in xFIP. Colorado is like Minnesota; they just don’t have guys who can throw it by you (29th in K/9 just ahead of the Twins), and in their ridiculous hitter’s park, that spells trouble.

(pre-season #4) Toronto: Dickey, Morrow, Johnson, Buehrle, Happ,Rogers, and a line of other guys. What happened here? This was supposed to be one of the best rotations in the majors. Instead they fell on their face, suffered a ton of injuries (only Dickey and Buehrle pitched full seasons: Romero, Drabeck were hurt. Johnson, Happ, Redmond only 14-16 starts each. This team even gave starts to Chien-Ming Wang and Ramon Ortiz. Why not call up Fernando Valenzuela out of retirement? It just goes to show; the best teams on paper sometimes don’t come together. The Nats disappointed in 2013, but probably not as much as the Blue Jays.

(pre-season #18) Baltimore: Hammel, Chen, Tillman, Gonzalez, Feldman, Garcia with a few starts given to Gausman and Britton. I’m not sure why I thought this group would be better than this; they were in the bottom four of the league in ERA, FIP, xFIP and SIERA. It just goes to show how the ERA+ value can be misleading. In their defense, they do pitch in a hitter’s park. Tillman wasn’t bad, Chen took a step back. The big concern here is the health of Dylan Bundy, who I thought could have pitched in the majors starting in June.

(pre-season #30) Houston: Bedard, Norris, Humber, Peacock, Harrell to start, then a parade of youngsters from there. We knew Houston was going to be bad. But amazingly their rotation wasn’t the worst in the league, thanks to Jarred Cosart and Brett Olberholtzer coming up and pitching lights-out for 10 starts a piece later in the year. There’s some potential talent here.

(pre-season #24) Minnesota: Diamond, Pelfrey, Correia, Denudo, Worley and a whole slew of guys who were equally as bad. Minnesota had the worst rotation in the league, and it wasn’t close. They were dead last in rotational ERA, FIP, and xFIP, and it wasn’t close. They were last in K/9 … by more than a strikeout per game. They got a total fWAR of 4.6 from every pitcher who started a game for them this year. Matt Harvey had a 6.1 fWAR in just 26 starts before he got hurt. Someone needs to call the Twins GM and tell him that its not the year 1920, that power-pitching is the wave of the future, that you need swing-and-miss guys to win games in this league.

Biggest Surprises: Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Miami and New York Mets to a certain extent.

Biggest Disappointments: Toronto, the Angels, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Baltimore to some extent.

Disagree with these rankings? Feel free to pipe up. I’ll use this ranking list as the spring board post-FA market for 2014’s pre-season rankings.

Now that the playoff fields are set … who has the most formidable playoff rotation?

Unlike previous rotation rankings posts, the playoffs focus mostly on the 1-2-3 guys. Your 5th starter may not even be on the playoff roster and your 4th starter usually just throws one start in a series where you can line up your guys, and some teams skip the 4th starter altogether if they at least one veteran pitcher who can all go on 3 days rest (there’s enough off-days in the 2-3-2 format to allow most guys to go on regular rest). So the focus here is on the strength of your top guys.

Here’s how I’d rank the 10 playoff teams’ rotations, despite the fact that two of these teams will be wild card losers and never get a chance to use their rotations:

Los Angeles: Kershaw, Greinke, Nolasco, Ryu (Capuano left out). As great a 1-2 combination Kershaw and Greinke are, Nolasco has for stretches outpiched them both since his trade, and Ryu is a #2 starter talent in the #4 slot. They’re going to be a tough out in any short series where Kershaw gets two starts. Easily the #1 playoff rotation.

Detroit: Scherzer, Verlander, Sanchez, Fister (Porcello left out). Hard to believe that a guy who most thought was the best or 2nd best pitcher in baseball (Verlander) may not even get the start in the first game of the playoffs. But they’re still the 2nd best rotation.

St. Louis: Wainwright, Miller, Wacha, Kelly (Westbrook and Garcia hurt, Lynn left out). The knock on St Louis’ current rotation is their youth; two rookies and a 2nd year guy who was in the bullpen all last year. Are there any innings-limit concerns here that could force a shutdown It doesn’t seem so at this point? It continues to amaze me how well St. Louis develops players. Carpenter and Garcia out all year? No worries we’ll just bring up two guys in Wacha and Miller who are barely old enough to drink but who can pitch to a 120 ERA+.

Tampa Bay: Price, Moore, Archer, Cobb (Hellickson left out); A tough top 4, if a little young on the back-side. Moore has quietly returned to this dominant form upon his call-up and gives Tampa a formidable 1-2 punch. Price has already pushed them past game 163.

Pittsburgh: Liriano, Burnett, Cole, Morton (Rodriguez hurt, Locke left out). The team previously said that Cole would likely a reliever in the playoffs, but I’ll believe that when I see it; he’s been fantastic down the stretch. It is difficult to put a rotation headlined by the burnout Burnett and the reclamation project Liriano this high, but their performances this year are inarguable.

Boston: Lester, Buchholz, Peavy, Lackey (Dempster, Doubront left out). Buchholz just returning mid September after a hot start; could push this rank up. I don’t necessarily trust the #3 and #4 spots here in a short series, but Boston can (and probably will) bash their way to the World Series.

Cincinnati: Bailey, Cueto, Arroyo, Cingrani (Leake left out, Latos hurt). Cingrani may be hurt, Cueto has returned to replace the sore-armed Latos. Leake’s performance may push him over Arroyo if they get there, but the odds of them beating Pittsburgh were already slim after their poor finish and were vanquished last night. Still, isn’t it nice when you have more quality starters than you need heading into a season, Mike Rizzo?

Atlanta: Minor, Medlen, Teheran, Wood (Hudson hurt, Maholm left out). If Wood is shutdown, Maholm makes sense as the #4 starter but has struggled most of the 2nd half and finished poorly. I may have this rotation ranked too low; they’re solid up and down, just not overpoweringly flashy.

Cleveland: Jimenez, Kluber, Kazmir, Salazar (Masterson in the pen, McAllister left out). How did these guys get a playoff spot? Amazing. They’re all solid, nobody especially flashy, and they won’t go away.

Oakland: Colon, Parker, Griffen, Gray (Milone, Straily left out, Anderson in long relief). I didn’t want to rank them last, considering Oakland’s record over their last 162 game stretch. But here they are; on an individual level one by one, they just do not stack up. The age-less wonder Colon is easily the staff Ace. The rest of these guys’ seasonal numbers are just not impressive.

These teams obviously didn’t make the playoffs, but were in the hunt until late, and since I had already typed up this content might as well say where I’d have ranked them, had they made the playoffs…

Washington: Strasburg, Gonzalez, Zimmermann, Haren (Ohlendorf, Roark left out, Jordan shut down) Perhaps you’d replace Haren with Roark based on September performances; I just can’t imagine trusting Haren in a 7 game series.. I’d put them about #4, just ahead or just behind Tampa. Gonzalez and Zimmermann have shown themselves to be oddly vulnerable here and there coming down the stretch, and I just don’t put Strasburg in the same elite category as Kershaw right now. Too bad months of indifference cost them the 4 games they needed to make up in the standings to reach the WC game.

Kansas City: Shields, Santana, Chen, Guthrie (Duffy, Davis, Mendoza left out): Duffy may be a better choice than Guthrie based on small sample sizes. I’d have put them just behind Cincy at #8 in terms of rotation depth.

Texas: Darvish, Garza, Holland, Perez (Tepisch, Grimm left out, Harrison hurt): Great Ace in Darvish (even if he has occasaional blowups), but falls off badly after that. The Garza acquisition has just not worked out, and the rest of the rotation is good but not overpowering. I’d put them behind KC but just ahead of Baltimore.

New York: Sabathia, Kuroda, Nova, Pettitte (Hughes, Phelps left out): Kuroda has been the ace of the staff this year, but you’d always lead off with Sabathia (though, had they made the playoffs it would be unknown if Sabathia could even go with his late-season injury). Either way, this would be behind any other playoff team’s rotation.